Week 11 Story: Jara's Story of Significance

Jara’s Story of Significance

There was a forest that was as silent as could be. It seemed as if a single noise was made the whole world would have heard it. In the heart of the forest stood Jara. Jara was a hunter, more specifically an archer. Jara had been in the forest a while and started to get eerie feelings about the whole ordeal. He was the only living creature, so it seemed. He was on the hunt for any ounce of protein, but there was not one insect to be found. There were no birds singing or cooing from the tree tops. In fact, the trees themselves wilted in their death. Jara was convinced that he was the only leaving creature left on Earth. He was starving. He was exhausted. He was hanging on to his last ounce of energy for dear life. He was going mad and was ready to use everything left in him to draw his arrow if he heard a noise or saw any movement in hopes of whatever caught his attention was food.

Finally, he saw a sliver of movement, and without thinking twice he drew his bow ready to kill whatever it was before it killed him. He released the arrow into the forest aiming for his target.  He hit his target, but to his surprise there was an ear-piercing scream from the victim of the arrow. He was shocked, he was convinced he was the only person left on Earth. Although Jara was shocked he never meant to hurt anyone, so he ran through the forest to his victim. Even though hitting a human was a shock for Jara, he had not even seen the half of it. He was appalled to find out he had wounded Lord Krishna. 

Jara continuously plead his case of being so hungry that he was blinded. That he never actually tried to kill Lord Krishna. He plead for Krishna’s forgiveness, but Krishna did not even seem to care that Jara had wounded his foot. Krishna was deeply understanding of Jara’s whole situation. After the freshness of the hunting incident died off, Krishna gave Jara a whole basket of fruit to eat. Jara ate through the fruit like a hurricane rips through the coast. After Jara was fed and not so hostile, Krishna explained a very important way of the world to Jara.

The big discussion boiled down to Krishna asking Jara to carry out the mission of narrating his life story.  Jara was very apprehensive at first because he was a hunter that could not read nor write, but Lord Krishna was persistent and Lord Krishna after all. Therefore, Krishna told Jara his whole story and told him to go learn how to read and write or go narrate the story to someone who could document the narration. Krishna did have one request about Jara’s narration though, he told Jara to narrate his story in his own words and interpretations. With that Krishna was gone and the only thing left was a glowing patch were Krishna had previously been.

(Krishna in his last moments of life. 

Photo provided by Wikimedia Commons)

Author’s Note:

This recreated Indian epic by me was based off of a chapter out of the original book “Krishna Krishna.” I kept the plot and the characters the same because I wanted to retell the story in my own words, not create a story that stemmed off of the original story. The original book was in a more modern language than all the other epics we have read this semester, so I would say I kept the writing style similar all the way throughout my version.  I pretty much kept all the same concepts of the original story but put my own unique style wording and style in the new version.

Bibliography: Krishna Krishna by Indira Parthasarathy. Prologue. No Web Source. Bought on Kindle.